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3 Video Tutorials – Portrait Retouching Tips Using Lightroom

Many of our readers use Photoshop to edits portraits, but what if all you have is Lightroom? Or you don’t know Photoshop as well? You can certainly do most of your portrait retouching using Lightroom.

Here are some video tutorials that walk you through a complete edit of one portrait from start to finish, using only Lightroom. I have also included one that I myself did too.  Every photographer has their own style, so take what works for you from each and apply that to your own editing style.

#1 Extended Lightroom Portrait Edit by Adam Lerner

Photographer Adam Lerner walks you through his portrait editing process from start to finish. He will give you some tips and tricks and great hidden gems inside Lightroom that you can use.

#2 Full Lightroom Portrait Editing by Photos in Color

Ed Gregory from Photos in Color processes a portrait using Lightroom from end to end. He makes a very different looking end result so if you’re looking for some style ideas and tips this might be a good one for you. See what he does the same and differently than Adam above, and myself below.

#3 Portrait retouching in 10 minutes using Lightroom

This is my version. Having taught Lightroom in the classroom and done portraits for over 20 years, I may have some good tips for you that you didn’t already know. I’ve been using Lightroom since the beta version 0.9 or so, and it’s my go-to image editor.

I almost never pull an image over to Photoshop unless I need to do layers for something. For portraits, that may be a head swap or something where I have to blend images. But otherwise, I pretty much use Lightroom for everything, even skin, eye and lip retouching.

Your turn

How do you use Lightroom to process and do your portrait retouching? Do you have any other tips the three of us missed? Please share in the comments below.

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Darlene Hildebrandt
Darlene Hildebrandt

is an educator who teaches aspiring amateurs and hobbyists how to improve their skills through free articles on her website Digital Photo Mentor and online photography classes. She also teaches all about photo editing using Lightroom, Photoshop, and Luminar Neo and has courses available on all three.

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